Brick Manufacturing

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Brick Manufacturing

Brick manufacturing and the Metalspray and Hard facing processes.

Man has for many years used lots of materials for constructing and building dwellings non- more so than the brick.

In the ancient city of Ur, in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), the first true arch of sun-baked brick was made about 4000 B.C. The arch itself has not survived, but a description of it includes the first known reference to mortars other than mud. Bitumen slime was used to bind the bricks together.

Essentially, bricks are produced by mixing ground clay with water, forming the clay into the desired shape, and drying and firing.

The brick manufacturing process has six stages:

1) Mining and storage of raw materials,

2) Preparing raw materials,

3) Forming the brick,

4) Drying,

5) Firing and cooling and

6) De-hacking and storing finished products.

Within these stages components in the manufacturing process become subjected to Corrosion, Wear, and Heat all of which can affect downtime and productivity.

The Metalspray process has been around since the early 1900’s and has used its ability to protect surfaces from these types of wear offering protection to OEM parts as well as reclamation.

The photos below show brick kiln carts as nearing their end of life, typical condition after years of operation, then photos of the new plates after arc spray is applied to the flame affected zone. The arc spray provides erosion resistance from the gas burner’s flame application inside the kiln.

In the Arcspray process, the raw material in the form of two metallic wires are melted by an electric arc . This molten material is then transferred to the substrate by compressed air. The molten metal spray solidifies on the substrate to form a dense, strongly adherent coating.

The process allows for many variations of metal materials to be applied to provide numerous solutions to varying forms of Wear. With the metalspray process Ceramic and Plastic materials can also be applied using associated metalspray equipment.

Other components that are subject to wear include Augers, the edges of screws, pulverizer mill scrappers, cones, combs, crushing hammers, mixer blades etc.

The wear of Core Brick Bridges is minimised and repaired by using an Oxygen Acetylene Hard Facing powder spray torch to apply Tungsten carbide in a 60 HRc Nickel, Chrome Boron matrix

Both Metal Spraying, Hardfacing and Brick manufacturing processes have shown their maturity and ability to develop to meet today’s expectations of increased efficiency with minimised effect upon the environment.